About The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging

The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging

The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging is a Springer journal devoted to how cardiovascular disease is seen: the design, development and evaluation of imaging methods, and the clinical research that shows what those methods change for diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and follow-up. Its modalities span magnetic resonance imaging, multi-slice computed tomography, X-ray imaging, intravascular imaging including intravascular ultrasound and optical coherence tomography, nuclear cardiology and echocardiography, and increasingly the combinations, registrations and computational processing that join one modality evidence to another.

The journal former title, International Journal of Cardiac Imaging, signals its origin in a period when cardiac imaging was separating itself as a discipline from general radiology and from cardiology practiced without imaging. Under its current title it addresses the whole cardiovascular system and a professional audience that is deliberately mixed: diagnostic and interventional cardiologists and radiologists, cardiovascular radiologists and imaging specialists, cardiothoracic surgeons, and the medical physicists, engineers, scientists and informatics specialists who build the tools those clinicians use. Few journals state that mixed audience as openly as this one does in its aims, and the mix explains much of its content.

This profile gives the verified identifiers and publisher information, explains the scope modality by modality and topic by topic, describes article types and editorship as listed by the publisher, places the journal metrics in their proper source-specific context, including a clear disagreement between the record on this site and SCImago-based listings, and sets out how authors and readers should judge fit and verify claims.

At a Glance

The ISSN pair in the record on this site, 15695794 and 18758312, matches the pair given by the publisher-facing listings and by SCImago-derived listings consulted for this profile. One older secondary listing gave a different second ISSN, 1573-0743, which reflects an earlier electronic ISSN form associated with the journal history. Readers verifying a recent article should use 1875-8312 for the current electronic edition and should not treat the older number, where they meet it in a dated listing, as evidence of a different journal.

A metric disagreement must be flagged plainly. The record on this site reports an h-index of 21 for this journal. SCImago-derived listings consulted for this profile report an h-index of 70, an SJR figure of 0.602 and a best quartile of Q2 across its cardiology and radiology categories. A gap of that size cannot be a rounding or year difference; the site record metric and the SCImago metric are counting different things, and the SCImago figure, drawn from Scopus for a journal with coverage stretching back decades, is the more credible guide to the journal long-run citation presence. As with other titles in this batch, quote any metric with its source and year, and do not use the site record h-index for this journal in an evaluative document.

History and Title Change

Listings give a long coverage history for the journal and its predecessor, reaching back into the late 1980s and 1990s in database coverage years, with the current title established around the turn of the century: one listing gives 2000 as the publication year for the current title form, and another describes the journal under its former name, International Journal of Cardiac Imaging, before the broadening to Cardiovascular. The change of one word, from Cardiac to Cardiovascular, is substantive rather than cosmetic. It widened the remit from the heart alone to the heart and vessels together, which is how patients present, how imagers work and how interventions are planned.

Through that change the journal remained a Springer title, published by Springer Science and Business Media in the Netherlands. That continuity of publisher, together with the ISSN lineage, is what makes the predecessor and current titles one journal history for citation purposes, while still requiring care in reference lists: an article published under the former title should be cited under the title as it stood in its publication year, not silently updated to the current title.

Scope: Modalities

The publisher aims and scope, summarised here in paraphrase, cover research and clinical communications dealing with the design, development and evaluation of imaging methods and their clinical research applications in cardiovascular disease. The modality list is explicit, and each modality brings a characteristic kind of article to the journal.

• Magnetic resonance imaging: cardiac and cardiovascular MRI methods, characterisation, function and tissue work, with a named section editorship for cardiovascular MRI on the publisher page
• Multi-slice computed tomography: coronary and structural assessment, acquisition and reconstruction, dose and quality questions, and clinical pathways built on CT evidence
• X-ray imaging: angiographic and related projection imaging in diagnosis and intervention
• Intravascular imaging: intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) for vessel wall and intervention assessment
• Nuclear cardiology: tracer, perfusion and function imaging and its prognostic use
• Echocardiography: ultrasound assessment of structure, function, valves and haemodynamics, at rest and under stress and in procedural settings
• Multi-modality and computational work: registration between modalities, image processing and analysis, and image-guided intervention, an area the journal notes with particular interest

Notice what the scope is testing in every case. A new sequence, a new reconstruction, a new measurement or a new processing method is not published merely because it is new. It is published because it has been designed, developed and evaluated, ideally against an existing approach or a clinical need, so that a reader can judge whether it should change practice, change a pathway or change a research design. Technical notes and proof-of-concept work have a place, but they earn it by showing what the innovation makes possible, not by assertion.

Scope: Clinical Topics

On the clinical side, the publisher scope gathers applications used in the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and follow-up of patients with cardiovascular disease. The topics named include single-centre and multi-centre studies dealing with validation of new or existing approaches, proof-of-concept work for new innovations, risk stratification and prognostication, imaging utilisation including cost-effectiveness studies, applications for better characterisation of the presence and extent of cardiovascular disease, assessment of the efficacy of new drugs and interventional devices, and multi-modality registrations.

That list repays attention because it shows the journal judging imaging by its consequences. Risk stratification work asks whether an image sorts patients into groups whose outcomes genuinely differ. Utilisation and cost-effectiveness work asks whether imaging is being used where it helps, a question health systems need answered with evidence rather than habit. Characterisation work asks whether imaging can say what a lesion, a muscle or a vessel wall actually is, not merely that something is present. Device and drug assessment work uses imaging as the measuring instrument by which a therapy effect becomes visible. A manuscript that connects a method to one of those consequences is speaking the journal language; a manuscript that reports images without that connection will usually need reframing or a different home.

The record on this site summarises the subject areas in its own terms as cardiac imaging and diagnostics, cardiovascular function and risk factors, and cardiac valve diseases and treatments. Those headings are consistent with the publisher scope, with valve disease a good example of a topic where echocardiography, CT and MRI each contribute a different part of the assessment and where imaging directly guides the choice and timing of intervention.

Article Types, Editorship and Audience

The current publisher aims list research articles, review articles, brief reports and editorial comments; older scope summaries also name technical notes, a category that fits the journal method-development tradition. Authors should check the current article type list and its requirements on the publisher page before submission, because type names and word or format expectations are set there and can change, and a directory profile should not be used as a substitute for those instructions.

The publisher page consulted for this profile lists Professor Thomas H. Schindler as Editor-in-Chief and names section editorship for cardiovascular MRI, including Assistant Professor Scott M. Bugenhagen in that section list. Editorial names change over time, and this profile states them as listed at the time of research, not as a permanent feature of the journal. Anyone writing to the journal, citing its leadership in a formal document or assessing a claimed editorial role should re-check the live editorial board page.

The stated target audience is unusually complete and is worth following as a writing guide. It includes cardiovascular medical specialists, including those in training and fellows, and other health care professionals interested in cardiovascular disease and imaging; diagnostic and interventional cardiologists and radiologists; cardiovascular radiologists and imaging specialists; cardiovascular researchers and cardiothoracic surgeons; medical physicists, scientists, engineers and informatics specialists developing new imaging tools and data processing and analysis; and representatives from industry, organisations and governments involved in products or policies for diagnosis and treatment. A good article in this journal is therefore written so that a clinician can follow the method and a methodologist can follow the clinical claim, without either being patronised.

Indexing, Quartiles and Metrics in Context

SCImago-derived listings place the journal in Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine and in Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging, both at Q2 as the best quartile in the listing consulted, with an SJR of 0.602 and the h-index of 70 already discussed. A separate listing gave a journal impact figure of 1.55 and a JCR quartile of Q3 in its categories for its year. Those two pictures are not a contradiction to be averaged away; they are different systems, SCImago based on Scopus and Journal Citation Reports based on Web of Science, applied to different category sets in possibly different years, and each should be cited as itself, with system, category and year named.

For most readers the practical summary is that this is a long-established, mid-ranked specialist imaging journal with a genuine international authorship and readership, sitting below the flagship general cardiology and radiology titles and above narrow or purely local publications. Its value to an author lies less in a single metric than in its audience fit: a cardiovascular imaging paper placed here reaches the clinicians and methodologists most likely to use it, in a title they recognise as belonging to their field.

Submitting and Verifying

Authors should begin from the Springer journal page and its submission guidelines, prepare the manuscript to the standards of its design, diagnostic accuracy, prognostic cohort, randomised work or technical evaluation as applicable, and report imaging acquisition and analysis in enough detail for another centre to repeat the work. Images themselves must be of publication quality and fully anonymised, and patient consent and ethics statements must be in order before submission, not assembled afterwards. Competing interests, funding and the role of any industry partner in design, analysis or writing should be disclosed fully, a point of particular importance where imaging equipment or devices are being evaluated.

• Verify the journal by the ISSN pair 1569-5794 and 1875-8312 on the publisher page
• Cite predecessor-title articles under International Journal of Cardiac Imaging for their publication years
• Check metrics in Scopus, SCImago or Journal Citation Reports directly, naming system and year
• Re-check editor and board names on the live publisher page before relying on them
• Be sceptical of any offer of guaranteed or unusually rapid acceptance arriving outside the publisher submission route

In the duplicate check for this profile, a slug search returned only this record for the journal, and an ISSN search returned only this post for 1569-5794. A loose search for cardiovascular imaging returns a very large number of unrelated medical journals, as expected for such common words, but none was a twin of this title. No confirmed duplicate was found, so this post was profiled in full, with the former title noted above as history rather than as a separate record claim.

How Imaging Evidence Is Judged by Readers

Experienced readers of this journal apply a set of questions that authors would do well to anticipate. Does the study state the clinical decision the imaging is meant to inform, or does it stop at showing that two methods differ? Are the patients described well enough for a reader to know whether their own patients resemble them? Was the imaging read blind to the comparator and to the outcome, and was more than one reader involved where judgement enters the measurement? Are reproducibility and variability reported, or only an average value that may hide wide disagreement? Does the analysis handle the fact that a patient can contribute several vessels, segments or lesions, so that observations are not independent? A paper that answers those questions clearly will usually be trusted even when its finding is modest, while a paper that evades them will be doubted even when its finding is dramatic.

Those questions also explain why the journal values multi-centre work and validation so highly. A method that performs well in the centre that invented it, on the equipment that centre owns, in the hands of its most experienced reader, has passed only its easiest test. Validation in other centres, on other equipment and in ordinary case mixes is what turns a promising method into a clinical tool. Authors with single-centre data can still contribute by reporting their setting honestly, by including the difficult cases rather than quietly excluding them, and by stating plainly what a validation study would need to show.

Finally, readers should keep the journal place in the wider evidence system in mind. Imaging findings influence guidelines only after they are gathered, compared and tested against outcomes in systematic work, so a single article here is best read as one contribution to a moving field. Its importance may lie in a measurement that later trials adopt, in a negative validation that prevents a weak method spreading, or in a utilisation study that changes how a service is organised. All three are real contributions, and the journal scope, unusually, has room for each of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the journal called before its current title?

It was the International Journal of Cardiac Imaging. The move to Cardiovascular in the title around the turn of the century broadened the remit from the heart alone to the heart and vessels together. Cite older articles under the title used in their publication year.

Which imaging methods does the journal cover?

Magnetic resonance imaging, multi-slice computed tomography, X-ray imaging, intravascular imaging including IVUS and OCT, nuclear cardiology and echocardiography, together with multi-modality registration, image processing and image-guided intervention work.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief?

The publisher page consulted for this profile lists Professor Thomas H. Schindler MD, PhD, FACC. Editorial leadership changes, so re-check the live publisher page before relying on that name in a formal document.

Is the journal a Q2 journal?

SCImago-derived listings consulted give a best quartile of Q2 in its cardiology and radiology categories, while a Journal Citation Reports based listing gave Q3 for its categories and year. Both can be correct in their own system. Always name the system, category and year when you quote a quartile.

Why does this site record show a much lower h-index than SCImago?

The two figures count different document and citation sets. The site record reports 21, while SCImago-derived listings report 70 from Scopus data. For a journal with this coverage history the SCImago figure is the more credible guide, and this profile flags the disagreement openly rather than presenting either number as system-free truth.

Verification and Sources

This profile was prepared from the journal record held on this site, the publisher and journal pages summarised in the accompanying sources file, and established bibliographic listings. Where a metric or a bibliographic detail differed between listings, the difference is stated openly in the text rather than hidden. Metrics change every year, so readers should check the live publisher page and the relevant indexing service for the figure that applies on the day they need it. No charge, timetable or editorial name has been stated here unless a source consulted for this profile supported it.